


i've seen good stars in your skin

by manusinistra



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-31
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2018-01-20 18:38:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1521386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manusinistra/pseuds/manusinistra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Paige has never had much use for New Year's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've seen good stars in your skin

**Author's Note:**

> This is more or less canon compliant, though I have no idea how the timeline’s going to work for 3B so I’m bracketing Toby as A/the girls finding out about it.

Paige has never had much use for New Year’s.

In her experience, it has little to do with life transformation: year after year things follow the same routine. There’s a dress, something dark and demure and classically pretty that she would never pick out for herself. She becomes a different person as soon as she steps into it, her mother straightening hems and tugging up zippers, clasping pearls around her neck. Then come the heels, just a few inches as Paige is tall already and it wouldn’t do for her to tower over her father’s friends (they don’t tend to like that, girls rising above them).

Paige hates it – how she gets bound and constrained, packaged into the perfect society daughter – but it’s less of a struggle than you might think. She knows how to walk in those shoes, how to sit like a lady (legs crossed at the ankle) and smile politely around hors d’oeuvres. That’s what Paige hates the most: her competence at this, how accustomed she is to artifice. She’s hidden parts of herself for years, so one night’s performance is really no strain.

This year, though, she’s breaking routine.

The doorbell chimes at nine. Paige answers it in jeans and a sweater; her parents are upstairs preparing for their usual party.

“Ready?” Emily says. Her eyes are warm, and Paige basks in being the cause of it. For such a long time any joy she could give Emily came with conditions; her cowardice sketched the limits of what they could be. Now, though, things are good between them – really, legitimately good, in a way that isn’t just a moment’s respite before things fall apart.

They’re the sort of good that makes Paige picture Emily when she thinks five years into the future, and while she’s not counting on them being together forever that she can imagine it and it doesn’t feel false is more than she’d ever thought possible. However nice that imagined future is, though, it has nothing on the warmth in Emily’s eyes and so Paige pulls herself back into the present.

Her mother appears as Paige is grabbing her coat. She smiles: she’s come to like Emily, even if she isn’t quite over blaming her for that whole Paige being kidnapped and almost killed thing.

“I’ll have her back by one,” Emily says. That they have that long together feels like a small miracle; a month ago getting Paige out of the house unaccompanied required elaborate schemes or prolonged begging.

“No need. We’re staying with the Waltons tonight. Though if Nick asks, I didn’t tell you that.”

Paige’s mother squeezes Emily’s shoulder, pulls Paige in for a hug.

“Have a good time, dear. It’s nice to see you happy.”

She closes the door behind them. Emily’s mouth has dropped open, which would be hilarious if Paige weren’t busy being just as shocked.

“That happened, right?”

“Don’t question it.” Paige says. “Just drive.”

;;

Hanna opens the door before they have the chance to knock, and while Paige is still learning Emily’s friends there’s a satisfaction to her grin that makes Paige wonder whether there’s some joke she’s not in on.

“You guys made it!” Hanna says, stepping back to let them in. She doesn’t move out of the way completely, though, so Paige and Emily end up trapped in the doorway, half in and half out of the house.

“Do we have to know a password?” Paige says.

“Not quite.”

Hanna points up – there’s something hung above their heads, green-leafed and red-berried, and oh, Paige realizes. Mistletoe.

“That wasn’t there this afternoon,” Emily says.

Hanna’s grin widens.

“Hmm. Go figure.”

She’s still blocking their entrance, and though Emily shakes her head she’s fighting a smile. She looks at Paige, and while Paige thinks mistletoe is more of a Christmas than a New Year’s thing she’s not going to say no to a chance to kiss Emily. So she moves closer, watches Emily’s eyes close and her smile expand until it clouds the whole of Paige’s vision; when she closes the distance she can feel the curve in Emily’s lips.

“I see she got you, too.”

It’s Spencer’s voice, and Paige is grateful for it. She tends to lose herself in Emily, and it reminds her that as lovely as kissing Emily is she doesn’t really need to be doing it for extended periods of time in front of other people. She pulls back, though Emily keeps hold of her hand.

“I just think we should be celebrating love,” Hanna is saying.

“Is that what you call making me sit through that awful  _New Year’s Eve_ movie?”

“That movie is _beautiful_ , Spencer.”

Spencer sighs, shooting Paige a look that begs for commiseration.

“How about a drink?” she says, and Paige nods and follows her into the kitchen, giving Emily’s hand a squeeze before she lets go.

She thinks of the party her parents are at by now, in a house built to be seen rather than lived in, where people talk all night just to hear their own voices. She’s still not convinced by New Year’s and its transformative power, but if in a year her life can change this much for the better who needs a day set aside for it, anyway.  

 


End file.
